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William Kurelek was the
eldest of seven children born to an immigrant
Ukrainian peasant and his Canadian-born wife
who settled as farmers on the prairies of
Western Canada. Farming life was hard, the
labour relentless, the physical world seemingly
more sky than land, the weather consisting
of four inexorable seasons. As he matured,
these elements became the themes of Kurelek's
art.
During his short life, through his illustrated
books, he became the best known and most beloved
of Canadian artists. At a time when abstract
paintings were fashionable, he gave the world
his innocent observations of everyday life
on the prairies, the landscape in all kinds
of weather, Ukrainian family life and celebrations,
days of joyful play and deadening drudgery.
But there was a dark side to his shining talent.
Scarred by the circumstances of his early
life he sank into a deep depression. Only
his art could provide him solace.
His relationship with his father was an agony
to them both. His father had arrived in Canada
from Europe at the age of 19 burdened with
bitterness and suspicion because of his troubled
life in Ukraine. He had left school at a Grade
3 level and above all else wanted his children
to have a good education. He decided that
William should train to be a doctor because
he was good with his hands, but William rebelled.
Timid, scrawny, weak, artistic and intelligent,
William embraced atheism and secular humanism
as a young man, even as he made and maintained
friends who were deeply committed to their
Christian faith.
He obtained a University degree, then headed
to the Ontario College of Art in Toronto.
He did not stay long. Instead, supporting
himself with manual labour, for the next several
years he painted, he travelled to Mexico to
find a teacher, and he studied the Nikolaides
method called "The Natural Way to Draw." To
this method he credited his technical artistic
breakthrough.
At twenty-five, he resolved to go to England
and from there to Europe for further study.
But shortly after arriving in England he had
to acknowledge his overpowering depression
and his anxiety about his eyesight, which
had been causing him a lot of pain. He checked
into Maudsley Hospital in London to undergo
observation. It was during this time that
he slit his wrists and arms.
Painting was part of his psychological treatment.
He produced "The Maze," a horrifying picture
that has become world-famous. "The Maze" depicts
all William's psychological problems packed
into the package of his own cloven skull.
While in Maudsley Hospital he was tended by
Margaret, an occupational therapist who brought
art supplies to him and encouraged him to
join in social activities. But most important
to William was her gift of an hour of her
own time at the end of every working day.
He discovered that she was a Catholic, who
made no attempt to convert or out-argue him.
He learned about the Catholic practice of
praying for others and, upon asking Margaret,
he learned that she was praying for him.
It was at this point that William felt a shift
in his spiritual compass. Touched by an amazing
grace, he determined, with excitement and
enthusiasm, to give the Christian faith every
chance to prove its points and plunged into
the study of religious and philosophical arguments
for and against Christianity. Four years after
his encounter with Margaret, he was received
into the Catholic Church, remodelling his
life on a day-to-day, God-centred pattern.
As he said, "Sometimes sorrow remarries a
person to God."
It was while William Kurelek was living in
England from 1952 to 1959 that his career
as an artist first blossomed and where he
first sold one of his paintings. When he returned
to Canada, he soon had a one-man show in Toronto,
which established him firmly as an artist.
Many of his paintings are deeply disturbing
and deal with nuclear war, starvation, environmental
degradation, his own mental illness, and his
own unhappy childhood. But fun, joy, and the
beauties of nature also flow brightly from
his palate.
He paints a white-robed Jesus Christ standing
unrecognized in a crowd on the steps of Toronto
City Hall. He paints Jesus comforting a homeless
person sheltered in a drainage pipe. He paints
a picture called "In the Autumn of Life."
It is late autumn in his father's homestead
garden. A large group is gathered for a family
portrait by a hooded photographer. In the
foreground across the dirt road behind a fallen
barbed wire fence is a cruciform, truncated
tree, on the far side of which can be seen
a crown of thorns, outstretched arms, a bent
leg. Tiger-like beasts snarl and leap below.
Following his conversion to Christianity,
Kurelek turned his attention to an artistic
task that he was determined to undertake as
his life's masterwork. He wanted to paint
the complete Word of God as revealed in the
New Testament. For this he travelled twice
to the Holy Land, where he studied the terrain
familiar to Jesus, how human beings accommodated
themselves to it, the facial features of the
people who lived there, everything that would
breathe authenticity into his painted rendition
of the life of Jesus Christ. On New Year's
Day, 1960, he took up the Gospel of St. Matthew
at Chapter 26, Verse 17, and joined Christ
at the beginning of his Passion on the day
before The Last Supper.
One hundred and sixty paintings comprise The
Passion of Christ. They depict The Last
Supper, The Garden of Gethsemane, the Betrayal
by Judas, Peter's Denial, The Accusations
of the High Priests, The Release of Barrabas,
Pilate's Hand Washing, The Scourging, The
Crucifixion and the Aftermath, The Entombment,
the Resurrection, and finally the Commissioning
of Disciplehood to preach the Gospel to all
nations. In between, other paintings that
point out the unending atrocities of human
strife are occasionally interjected .
It had always been Kurelek's dream that these
paintings would eventually be made into a
film. Through intelligent use of camera angles
and lighting, specially composed music and
a powerfully reverent reading of the Biblical
text, his dream has been brilliantly fulfilled.
Kurelek didn't harbour any real hope that
the pictures would be marketable. But as he
was working on them, he presented the series
to Mykola and Olha Kolankiwsky, who had opened
a small art gallery in Toronto. They were
so inspired by the paintings that a few years
later, in 1971, they bought all 160 paintings
and built the Niagara Falls Art Gallery &
Museum in Niagara Falls to house them. "I
was flabbergasted!" wrote William.
In 1977, Kurelek made a painting journey to
the Ukrainian village where his father had
grown up, searching for his Ukrainian roots.
He painted the farms, the village, the villagers,
their activities, and the artefacts. He returned
home, fatally ill with cancer. He died in
Toronto on November 3, 1977 at the age of
50.
The final words of his autobiography, Someone
With Me, are:
"What I am sure of, however, is that I am
not really alone any more in the rest of my
journey through this tragic, puzzling, yet
wonderful world. There is someone with me.
And He has asked me to get up because there
is work to be done." -
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